December 7, 2006

I want everyone to focus on this moment. Clear your mind of family, work, Christmas shopping, bills, holiday preparations and any other distractions. Lift your head. Put down the GameBoy, the PS3, quit the porno website, stop dreaming about the first million dollars you're never going to make. Stop gazing at your navel and look around you.

Observe our country today. Know what is going on here. See what is happening. You are seeing the final days of the worst president in the history of the United States (two years, one month, one week, and six days before we are rid of him).

From now on, any future president thought to be stupid will be compared to George W. Bush. Any future president thought to be incompetent, arrogant, ultra-religious, thoughtless or dogmatic will be compared to George W. Bush.

Not only is this scourge in the Oval Office making the United States look stupid, arrogant, incompetent and thoughtless, he's also making his family look hideously inept. I fully understand his father weeping during a speech. The old man was weeping for his fellow-president son who has embarrassed the family once again only this time on a global scale.

Those of us who voted for W in 2000 have learned to live with our shame. We had a chance to cleanse ourselves in 2004 and some of us did.

Those who voted for him in 2004 after seeing W's track record, well, the fate of our country's immediate future rests on your shoulders. Your blind prejudice turned good, honest critics of the Iraq war into "traitors." Your vote encouraged the so-called neo-cons. Neo-con artists if you ask me.

You W people have another chance if you can survive until the 2008 elections. That's the marvelous thing about democracy. If you're a voter, you always get another chance.

Be informed. Don't just take the word of your pastor, professor or bartender. Some good Republicans are lining up. So are some good Democrats. Don't blow it. Make a solemn vow that you won't vote for another ... well ... I'm trying to watch my language. I have grandchildren who read.

10 Comments

Englehart writes, "Those of us who voted for W in 2000 have learned to live with our shame." The structure of that sentence -- those of US -- invites the readers to suppose that Englehart voted for Bush. Did he? How many other writers for the Courant voted for Bush? Time to name names.

And among others to be included on the "don't take the word of" list are political cartoonists. George Bush is not the worst president ever.....GWB is the target of biases on a scale of spite and hatred which has not been seen since the days of Abraham Lincoln. Your opinion has helped to vote in a scary group of know-nothings and may well bring on greater troubles for the USA because they bring their own peculiar baggage of pork, biases and allegiances into this war. Many want to sit and have tea-time with Iran while Iran sits in the catbird seat with its own agenda for mid-east dominance. I will attend to my own safety and that of my family. As our forefathers did in endangered times, I will "sleep with one-eye open and will keep my powder dry" because we are as vunerable as on that day, December 7, 1941, when we dreamed of neutrality and the reality of war slammed us in the face. The media has ignored the real casualty count of this forty year old war declared on us by the Islmo-terrorists. More than the 3000 civilians 2900 military in Iraq/Afgahnistan on and since 9/11. Check the history and you will find thousands more here and abroad. Bob, cheer on for the new rookie team and play your games against the current coach, but this ball game "ain't" over by a long shot. Its still one we can lose. Let's see what you draw a year from now!

E.B. White wasn't a big fan of deconstructing humor. Said it was like dissecting a frog; you get a look at its inner workings, but something is lost in the process. Namely, the frog. Still.

It's an interesting idea and one I haven't seen before. A political cartoonist explaining his cartoons. I've always been jealous of guys like you. Takes me 750 words on the op-ed page to say what you can say with a picture and a line or two of dialog.

All that said ( In less than 750 words! ) I'll keep checking in on your frog. Er, blog.

What I appreciate most about your diary is that it shows you don't (always) just take a cheap shot. Sometimes a cheap shot is appropriate - your trademark NU cartoon will live forever, but this helps "laymen" better understand the thought that goes on, and the subtleties involved in a well crafted panel. Someone who isn't at least modestly informed won't understand many of the different components you used.

And you couldn't have written a better endorsement of your diary than "Larry" did for you. He's the living example of thoughtless dogmatism you criticized. His closed-minded, blind allegiance to a label - not even to the ideology the label long ago abandoned - is the saddest commentary about the imbecilic absolutism that comes closer to permanently damaging our republic.

And the best political cartoons are the ones that are the most subversive. So keep making them better and better.

It amazes me how shallow-thinking people are that they don't see the long term benefits President Bush has envisioned for the country. OK, let me put this in simple terms, as he is so adept at doing.

Since the downfall of the evil Soviet empire, we haven't had the unifying benefit of a common enemy. The result is the liberals and non-Christians are now focusing on tearing our own country apart. The answer, as President Bush has learned from God and is now trying to enlighten the rest of us, is to create another common enemy. In a move of brilliance, Bush has succeeded in this by attacking and occupying a defenseless country, which, it turns out, was infested with terrorists and insurgents, to infuriate the false god muslims and turn world opinion against us. I mean the whole world, what better common enemy to have than that?

All of you who want to cut & run will see the best solution is to stay the course in Iraq until we win against the evildoers of the world. Hopefully we never actually win, since that would serve to un-unite us again.

I'm not sure whether W is the worst president in American history...he may only be the second worst. Andrew Johnson rapidly reversed the victory of the North over slavery and oppression in the South by cancelling Sherman's order to give freed slaves "40 acres and a mule", by refusing to protect freed slaves from the rising violence against them, and by restoring the former slave owners to their land, instead of redistributing it to all poor Southerners, including impoverished whites. The result was another century of brutal repression of African-Americans and a medieval economic system that pitted poor whites, who were just a short rung above them, against Blacks through Jim Crow. But W's blowout of the federal deficit (+50% in just five years), his scrapping of the bill of rights, his contempt for other countries that has resulted in our virtual isolation in the world (almost his only ally- Tony Blair- has been forced to announce his early retirement next year), and his dogged pursuit of the right to torture whomever he pleases wherever in the world he pleases, has besmirched America's reputation for decency built up over two centuries.

Is there any doubt in any thinking person's mind that both Al Gore and John Kerry would have made fine presidents?

Bob,
I always look forward to seeing your cartoons in the morning (I won't admit how many I've printed and blown up, and hung up in my cubicle or saved as a screensaver), and reading your blog as it's not too often I come across narratives such as yours--honest, unbiased (yes, unbiased), as well as entertaining.

I say you're unbiased because you will support something (Bush in 2000!?) until it's "unsupportable" and unfathomable to place faith in. How people voted again for Bush in 2004 is beyond me. We have a list of what he hasn't done for this country, so what HAS he done?!

You criticize everyone that should be criticized regardless of party affiliation, race, cause, background, etc. We're all human and make our mistakes and you write about those mistakes when they are either explicit (Bush, every time he talks, period) or implicit (shady happenings on their way to being proven unfortunate).

It's just refreshing to read your words. We see other countries voice their distress in protest and violence and, while wrong, the people realize their discontent is rightfully able to be voiced. In most countries, there are repercussions to voicing it, but not in this country unless it's a direct threat. Why are people so shocked when disapproval is demonstrated against an inept president? No one is a traitor for voicing the obvious. I applaud you for calling things as you see them and aiming criticism at the correct targets. I commend those people who still say Iraq was still the right target (for their persistence only.)

Although I know we didn't and don't belong in Iraq...we can't pull the troops back, we somehow have to finish what we started. I knew if Bush won in 2004 we’d be worse off than we were at the time, but I never could have anticipated the degree of the downward spiral.

great cartoon and interesting blog entry. i just hope we survive the next two years. as larry above says, it's still a game we can lose. i say let the rookies roll with it. the "experienced" folk have been blowing it badly for a long time.